Path of Exile 2 director "really sorry for how this went down" as he announces new Path of Exile 1 expansion has to be paused: "How could I justify taking some of the most experienced developers we have off PoE 2 when it's on fire?"

gamesradar.com:

As Path of Exile 2 faces issues such as "crashes, severe end-game balance problems," game director Jonathan Rogers shares the news that a new Path of Exile 1 expansion has been delayed until the team can sort out issues with the sequel.

"When we announced PoE 2, we promised that we would continue to create PoE 1 expansions," Rogers begins. "We do intend to keep that promise, but it's certainly been a lot harder to deliver on it than what we expected."

He explains that PoE 1 devs had to be moved off of that game to help with the launch of PoE 2, "We literally couldn't think about anything else until it was done. How could we think about making a PoE 1 expansion when we still have hundreds of thousands of people who are having bad experiences in PoE 2?"

Unfortunately, the issues with PoE 2 meant a lot of the studio's manpower was assigned to it rather than working on PoE 1. "How could I justify taking some of the most experienced developers we have off PoE 2 when it's on fire," Rogers asks?

He says after Christmas, "we had to really admit something to ourselves." Most work on PoE 1 is going to be paused because the team needs to "fix the most severe deficiencies that PoE 2 has before we can take our eyes off it."

Pre-production work will still go ahead for the PoE 1 expansion, but Rogers currently "can't promise a date right now," so there's no telling when it will be ready. He says the team will likely need to work on PoE 2 for at least a couple of weeks after its 0.2.0 update to ensure the game keeps running smoothly before they can go back to work on PoE 1.

Since the release of Path of Exile 2 in Early Access, our players have been asking about the future of Path of Exile 1 and the timeline for its next expansion. In this video Game Director Jonathan Rogers addresses the situation. pic.twitter.com/DKCq9yv6cRJanuary 30, 2025

"I'm really sorry for how this went down," Rogers says. "Honestly, I should have predicted the fact that taking the PoE 1 team off PoE 1 would